


Beggars Would Ride

by highfantastical



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfantastical/pseuds/highfantastical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A number of ways in which Blake and Avon did or did not leave each other, or imagined they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beggars Would Ride

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,  
we ourselves flash and yearn

~John Berryman

_1._

"It's all right, now," says Blake. He cannot take his eyes from the etched bones of the other man's face, the slight hollowness at the temple. Without any conscious choice, his hands are running quickly and lightly over Avon's tense throat and his still, cool arms. Blake is afraid that the cacophony of his own breathing may drown out some reply. Three words beat loudly through his mind: not like this, not like this. Three pains in his gut which do not quite fade.

Avon says nothing. His eyes don't open, but they move under the lids.

 

***

 

_2._

Vila counts the tiles in the ceiling so he doesn't have to look at the other man in the cell, lying awkwardly curled on his side. Fastidious Avon has not moved since he first came round, even though at first he retched and retched until Vila had to put his fingers in his ears, hard. It was worse than any crying could have been.

Now the silence is so absolute that Vila imagines he can hear his own heart beat, keeping time with the counting. Two hundred. Two hundred and one. When Avon's leather clothes scrape against the floor the noise is almost unbearable. Vila looks quickly, and his eyes burn suddenly, because Avon has curled closer into himself as if he wants more than anything to be gone, or to be a child again. It is only one more sign that things are worse than Vila had imagined they could be, because Avon is breaking the tenet of not-showing-things, and he doesn't do that.

It might be better if he'd died, Vila thinks, and then he feels sweat prickling over his body, and he is all at once frightened that Avon might discern the thought, and ashamed. So then he really has no choice any more, and he sets his teeth to do the decent but terrifying thing: he shuffles across the dirty floor, one inch at a time, until he's close enough to touch. I was never keen on dangerous creatures, he thinks. Even dogs – I only really liked small ones. Avon's hair is soft and rough and damp under his fingers, the room smells acrid, and he remembers the domes, the stench in the streets after chucking-out on a Friday night, the glittering of a projected sky. "Beggars would ride," he murmurs.

 

***

 

_3\. _

Blake dreamt that Avon was clinging and pliable, that he covered Blake's face with kisses. He dreamt that Avon stood at the door and didn't look at him, and laughed savagely, quietly. "For nothing now can ever come to any good," he said. And in the dream, Blake thought: his tone is most sardonic when he says something obviously emotional.

When he wakes, Blake realises that anything would be better than such a perfect absence. On the Liberator, Blake remembers, the air is cleaned and recycled every two hours. How efficient the systems are. Blake recalls the smell of him completely and in every detail, but it is quite, quite gone.

 

***

 

_4._

Blake imagines how Avon will look walking away from him. Probably this will happen in a very familiar corridor, probably it will be banal. Only some memory he didn't even know he had – really more a miasma than a thought, after the mind-wipes – casts them both in a great drama of goodbyes, the slim black figure receding and receding, down a grand and lighted boulevard in the old world, and vicious morning lighting up the sky.

The advantage of this is that he will not be entirely ridiculous when Avon remembers him.

 

***

 

_5._

Hours after planetfall, Blake goes to Avon's door. He leans against it for a moment and listens for breathing, but the soft wind stirs his hair and stirs the trees, he cannot hear anything. Three moons strut slowly above the mountains; Blake should be sleeping, the negotiations start tomorrow and he must be fresh for them.

Avon sits up straight in the absolute dark. The hair has risen all along his arms, but he is not cold.

Blake raises his hand to knock.


End file.
